Two weeks ago, in Cultivating Empathy: My Journey to Understand, I shared this fairly common definition of empathy: the ability to walk in the shoes of another person, to live their life momentarily, to understand the world inside their head. And I asked, Won’t more empathy make the world saner, safer, and more just? Today,… more »

Diane Ackerman wrote a lovely (delightful actually) book called Cultivating Delight. It was a memoir of sorts, but, subtitled A Natural History of My Garden, it was also a garden book. I’m pulling from that title for today’s post, Cultivating Empathy: My Journey to Understand. By the way, for clarity, I’m defining empathy as the ability… more »

I was sorting through old papers in my office a few weeks ago. Here you go; take a look. I know; it’s a mess. But forget that part. This is not a post on clutter and cleanliness. See that manila envelope peeking out from beneath the edges of my laptop? Here it… more »

I can’t find the origin of that statement — I’ve used it for over twenty years — and fear it may be lost. I’ll use it anyway. I sat down to write a post on last Saturday’s Women’s March, 2018. Pictures and all. Then, I read the New York Times’ story on the Women’s March,… more »

This past Monday would have been the 89th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Born in 1929, the same year as my mother (sorry Ma; did you want to keep that a secret?), MLK could still be alive and productive today had he not been assassinated fifty years ago this April! He was just 39… more »

For those of you fairly new to And So It Goes, I first discovered John McCutcheon’s song, Christmas in the Trenches, in 2013. It tells an amazing and long forgotten true story, one that I’m committed to sharing. I’ve been posting it every Christmas Eve since. I hope you’ll take the time to listen to the song and peruse… more »

Well, it happened again. I choose an important and timely topic — the importance of maintaining a healthy skepticism — but, in the course of putting the post together, I veer off into another land. Could that have been what happened to Lewis Carroll? Plans were to introduce you to my favorite British philosopher… more »

IN MEMORIAM The following is borrowed from The Poetry Foundation website. The words have been put to music in the shape note tradition, one of the pieces we sing in Continua (verses 1, 2, and 7, which I’ve put in bold. I’ve also added quotes for clarity). I wish I could add the melody for… more »

This week’s guest will be a familiar name for those who have read my book, At Home on the Kazakh Steppe. Gulzhahan Tazhitova was my counterpart while I was a Peace Corps volunteer and was instrumental in my success both living and teaching in Kazakhstan. I believe I describe her in the book as… more »